


But Grant Ward came back...

by Bacner



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Avengers (Marvel Movies), MCU, Pathfinder (game)
Genre: AU-Skrull Invasion, AU-crossover, AU-freeform, AU-lycanthropes, AU-succubus, AU-supernatural, Baby Fitzsimmons, Bobbi Morse IS a demonic hell beast, Coming Back, CyberTek, F/M, Free Will, Gen, Post S3, Redemption, Return, back from the dead, but a nice one, predeterminism, relationships, strix - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-28 01:38:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6309175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the defeat of Hive, Lincoln and Daisy expected to have a normal, happy relationship (by InHuman standards). But then, Grant Ward came back from the dead, bringing Kara Palamas as well...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapters 1-4

_Old director Coulson, he had troubles of his own_  
He had Grant Douglas Ward, who wouldn't go alone;  
He tried and he tried getting Grant Ward away,  
He tried giving Grant to Hive, who lived really far away... 

-1-

The first time Lincoln has met Grant was about 15 hours later when they had gotten rid of Hive for good, by trapping him in a S.H.I.E.L.D. space shuttle (an improvised one) and blowing it up beyond Earth's atmosphere, in space. Judging by the fact that Hive was here like the cat from the folk poem, it still had failed - or not, since he seemed to be behaving very differently from the insane self-centered cannibal that Lincoln has learned to fear and to hate...

"Now wait just a moment, here," Hive/not-Hive said brightly in the following silence. "Of course there was a chance that I would stay dead - as I told Werner, this was a double-or-nothing deal, so if she chose to stay, so would I."

"But you haven't, so she didn't," Werner nodded wisely. Technically, he shouldn't even been here, since he wasn't an InHuman, (no more than Leo Fitz was, for example), but he was Hydra (well, sort of, since Malick was gone, and the odds were that the remainder of Hydra would follow suit soon as well), so he was decided to be lumped with the rest of them.

S.H.I.E.L.D. was about options, certainly, at a certain point, Werner had them too...but he wasn't very interested in them, especially in those that interested S.H.I.E.L.D., so here he was - standing right across his superior. 

"Yes, yes I didn't," Kara Palamas agreed, startling everybody, as she undid the restraints on the younger man, "I mean, we did come back. After all, if the idea of Heaven is being constantly rubbing shoulders with the upgraded versions of agent Morse, I think I'll be walking this earth for a while. Babe, that's the young Strucker and the Guytierra character. What of the rest of them?"

"I don't know," Grant shrugged in an exagerrated way. "Mr. Guytierra, who are these characters?"

"Loyalists, sir," Guytierra replied, rather nervously, and in no small way because Grant looked less than happy with his reply and with him. "To you-"

"To 'me' me, or to 'degenerate alien who ate people' me? We're quite different, thank you very much," Grant still didn't sound pleased with his vassal. "I don't know them, and Hive...do I really want to work with people who worked for **It**?"

"Sir, please! We have a choice - to sell our souls to S.H.I.E.L.D. or to lose that very particular part of us!" Guytierra yelled. "We- You- You've rescued your wife from death itself - can you do a smaller thing for us?!"

"Aw, do it, Grant, if you can?" Kara says with a small sly smile on her face. "Plus, your ex is safely pregnant-"

"She is not!" Lincoln says automatically. "It's more like her mother - the fertility cycles in her InHuman result in some physical changes-"

"Or maybe she has thyroid-related issues, as Bobbi does, or the junk food began to catch up with her," Kara shrugged. "Grant?"

"Kara? Mr. Guytierra? Get our people down," Grant replied as he walked over to Daisy and hit her beneath the right eye. Daisy stiffened, gasped, paled, opened her mouth- "Right now!" He jabbed Daisy in the same spot again and... Daisy's powers exploded violently outward of her, spinning her around, as her own internal control vanished however and Grant brightly grabbed her by the neck and spun her around for further damage, standing in the eye of the storm, so to speak. 

Even during her regular, controlled self, Daisy's powers are awe-inspiring and worthy of respect, but this is completely different, this is just chaos and destruction, a perfect storm that sweeps away everything and everyone in its path... until it is spent.

Miraculously, Lincoln wasn't hit so hard, just knocked down, and now he was getting back up. He was getting back up - and came face to face with Hive/not Hive. No, this man clearly wasn't Hive - Hive's eyes had been dead and flat and dull. These ones burned - in a manner too similar to the InHumans' for Lincoln's comfort.

"Here, take her," the man thrust Daisy towards Lincoln; Lincoln grasped her and stumbled: his friend and girlfriend was clearly out of it. "Take care of her. When we meet again...things will probably go even worse."

-2-

The first time Daisy saw Lincoln after that unmitigated disaster that S.H.I.E.L.D. triumph was supposed to be, she was in the medical wing, and her body was all pins and needles.

"This wasn't Hive, was it?" Lincoln asked her quietly. "Hive wasn't a fighter, It was just a parasite who tried to use others to Its' job for It. This is a completely different person."

"Yes. His name was Grant Ward. He was my first supervising officer before he declared his allegiance for Hydra," Daisy said bitterly. "What he had done to me?"

"I think that he had figured out how to reset chakras for people such as us," Lincoln confessed. "There were some InHumans who knew how to do that. There were none that do, at least in Jiaying's time-"

Daisy ignored the mention of her mother. Lincoln knew that the situation was serious then.

"What are we going to do, Sparky?" she asked him, miserably. "This isn't some hollow corpse powered by an alien worm, this is the original T-1000! And he seems to be looking for blood, too!"

"I wasn't there on the Bus with you, remember?" Lincoln confessed. "So I cannot really say. And as for blood - so far there wasn't any. Yes, you've been exhausted, and yes, May and Mack had been paralyzed all this time, but their paralysis has largely worn off by now, and you have recovered too."

"But I remember- I remember-"

"Daisy? A direct hit from you back then would've been certain death. But there were no direct hits - at least not at people. The building, now, it's something else..."

Daisy grew noticeably thoughtful. "But it's T-1000!" she almost wailed. "He never misses!"

"Sk-Daisy?" Coulson appeared on the scene, looking clearly relieved (to put it mildly) that his surrogate daughter was back and recovered. "How are you-?"

"Pins and needles, but I've been worse," Daisy admitted. "I think that I've heard something about a contracted architect or was it a contacted one?" she lied, stalling for time, but her lie had an unexpected result.

"You have no idea!" Phil Coulson twitched. "The FitzSimmons warned me that it was a bad idea involving an architectural expert, but I didn't listen. Now we got this going on for us!" He produced a blueprint sketch that caused Daisy to stare in astonishment. 

"This looks suspiciously like a bee hive," she told her father figure. "You sure that this fellow isn't another secret Hydra sympathizer?"

"I think that this is more of a wasp nest instead, but otherwise, what Daisy said," Lincoln nodded. "Can't the FitzSimmons, with Mack's help, do the work instead?"

"...You told me that Mack, and May, were paralyzed?" Daisy whirled back to her boyfriend.

"The paralysis has worn off," Lincoln shrugged, "plus most of the time Mack had been sponge-bathed by Jemma, so he doesn't appear to be too upset of being defeated by Grant so easily."

"And May?"

"Fitz used his robots for the same thing," Lincoln confessed. "So how do we play this?"

"D.C.," Daisy, instead of replying, turned quietly to the older man, "what is your take on this? According to Lincoln, Grant hasn't purposefully hurt anyone-"

"According to May, now that she and Mack had recovered, ditto," Coulson replied, equally quietly. "Apparently, Grant has distracted her, by taking Mack's pants of in front of her, then paralyzed her, while she was distracted."

"And then?"

"And then nothing," Coulson confessed, not very happily. "Yes, she and Mack were dumped into the jet's cargo hall; yes, when Kara came aboard, naked, she promptly undressed May and put her on top of Mack, while dressing herself in May's uniform; but that was it. Hell, the two of them even left us instructions as to care for Mack and May for the rest of the week."

"So, instead of seeking closure with us, Grant is now seeking something else?" Daisy pondered this over. "Or does he even not seek anything from us?"

"Next time you see him, why don't you ask him yourself?" Coulson muttered. "For the moment, I got an architect to deal with."

-3-

The opportunity to do that comes in one or two weeks. Surprisingly, (or not), Grant and Kara aren't making any frontline news; rather, they seem to be downplaying whatever they seem to be doing, so externally, (to a casual onlooker) the situation appears to be proceeding exactly how Coulson and the others intended it to be - without Malick, Hydra is in disarray once more, so S.H.I.E.L.D. and the rest of the free world can breathe easier...and maybe they can. After all, even Grant has his limits, even he had some help from Malick when it came to Hydra, right?

...This sounded so much more positive before he had returned from the dead, brought Kara Palamas with him, and had been able not just to overwhelm Daisy, but to use her against S.H.I.E.L.D. (literally) and defeat May alongside Mack too. May, in particular, has turned introvert once more, going on fewer missions than before (but then again, there are fewer missions than before, also), going over some material that she had found online and in libraries - most of it in Chinese. She had asked Lincoln, once, to help her out with it, as he had once helped her out with Andrew. Lincoln looked over the information, thought about Dr. Garner, who was still at large, and told May that he had no problems helping her out, provided that he'll be telling Daisy about this too. May thought this over, and politely declined Lincoln's help, at least for the moment. 

Lincoln still told Daisy about it however, just because. Daisy thought this over, didn't go to confront May, but kept the knowledge to herself. Life continued as usual in S.H.I.E.L.D., put otherwise, albeit at a less intense pace - and then one day, when Daisy and Lincoln decide to go onto one of their not-quite-dates (not unlike the FitzSimmons they don't really want to be seen by others as a couple, especially lately), they see general Talbot and his wife leaving a restaurant.

By itself, this is hardly big news - though Talbot had warmed up some to Coulson, the truth is that both men are happier with some distance between them; the president's order to work together or not, S.H.I.E.L.D. has its own thing, and Talbot - his own, and the two don't often come across, which suits both sides just fine; Talbot isn't as bad as some other U.S. military rank and file (Thaddeus Ross comes to mind), but all the same he isn't exactly part of S.H.I.E.L.D., and both sides are fine with this.

On their own, the general and his wife would be just someone to mention to Coulson when Daisy and Lincoln would return back to the base, (S.H.I.E.L.D. should track the couple down easily enough, even without Daisy's computer skills, if such a need arises), but then she sees the woman of the couple that the Talbots had been talking to.

The hair style is different, and the scar has been greatly diminished, (thanks to the more mundane, yet expensive, versions of plastic surgery), but it is Kara Palamas. Abruptly, Daisy and Lincoln have discovered something more interesting than another date during which they discuss if they want children, (apparently, the InHuman women have it differently from ordinary ones), as they abruptly change directions and walk inside, right over to Kara and her companion.

"Been busy, have we?" the older woman replies with a sly and decisively unfriendly smile on her lips.

"Yup," Daisy replies in an equally unfriendly, and even grimmer, tone. "Where's Ward?" she nods towards the other woman's companion, whose lips curl into a mocking grin of his own. Given his size, he looks even more formidable than the former agent 33 does.

"I don't know," the giant speaks in a familiar voice. "Around, probably."

"...This isn't a photostatic veil," Lincoln figures it out first. "Hive lied when he said that you weren't an InHuman, didn't he?"

"Hive was an alien worm that ate people," Grant replied flatly. "Seriously, what's wrong with you, people? You don't trust Kara or me - fine. You believed Hive? This is something else, something worse. No wonder that he had almost defeated you."

"And yet..."

"There are two similar types of InHumans. One is like Sk- Daisy. Her metamorphosis goes from the skin inwards, her kind is descended from the Kree. The other is like me. My metamorphosis went from the inside outside, with my skin falling off of me in pieces. I've descended from the Skrulls. Hive, on the other hand, was a degenerate member of his kind, he had forgotten much, including of the difference between the gifted who descended from the Kree and those from the Skrulls. Plus, the fact that I was coming back, with Kara, threw some sort of a factor into his plans..."

"And what of your own plans?" Daisy said flatly. "I don't know how you survived a crash from space-"

"I got a thing with fire," Grant smiled slightly, with his lips alone, as a tiny flame appeared over his fingertips. "It helped. Plus the fact that I had been caught in falling mundane planes in the past helped too. I'm not like you, Daisy, I'm no prodigy, for me - practice makes perfect, as does experience...and I had plenty of experience."

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, then?" Daisy glared. "D.C.-"

"Stop," Kara spoke patiently, in a falsely contrite voice. "Director Coulson and Grant over here are two different men caught - well, formerly caught, I hope - in a very nasty relationship. Director Coulson is, or was, constantly forcing Grant to do what he wanted to do, and Grant constantly tricked the director into doing what Grant wanted him to do. This was very unhealthy, so we're now breaking it off. The director has killed Grant, Grant is back, the end. Coulson can find now someone new to do his dirtier work. Morse and Hunter should fit the bill nicely."

"Such lovely, altruistic views," Daisy began, her voice was heavy with disgust, but Kara interrupted her:

"Hey, you know what they say - 'toe the party line, but don't believe it'. You people left me to rot in Hydra, Grant saved me, so please excuse me, but... did you people even throw me a wake?"

"No, I don't remember anyone mentioning it; not even mentioning you," Lincoln spoke up, despite the glare that Daisy shot him.

"Precisely," Kara nodded, as she smoothly got onto her feet. "Baby?"

"Coming," Grant replied solemnly as he got onto his feet. "Coulson, once, made a lot of noise about Hand and one of the Koenigs. Did you ever throw them a wake either?"

Daisy pursed her lips but said nothing.

"Point made," Grant smiled once with his lips alone. "Good luck, Lincoln, with your woman and your life. We will meet again, I suspect. Oh, and read the newspapers. We're publishing our plots there, for now."

With those words he and Kara were gone. Daisy and Lincoln would've followed them, but the former had stuck them with the bill. It wasn't a very expensive bill, but it wasn't theirs, so in the principle of things it rankled.

-4-

To Lincoln's surprise, (somewhat, he was becoming used to living in S.H.I.E.L.D., where surprises and unexpected were expected and not very surprising, basically), Coulson wasn't caught flat-footed by his and Daisy's debriefing, (including the humiliating bit with the bill).

"Yes, I know. The FitzSimmons have just discovered this while you two were out on your not-a-date," Coulson spoke the last words with a somewhat humorous grin, implying that it was a joke, but seeing that the InHuman agents weren't very impressed by his humor, cut it out. "CyberTek is back."

"What?!" Daisy exclaimed, before noticing the confused look on Lincoln's face and explained further:

"CyberTek was a front - a company front, but a front all the same - for Garrett and Grant. It was designed to produce cyborg super-soldiers for Hydra and the U.S. military. Deathlok, whom you've met in the Arctic, was going to be their first, but we were able to save him," she finished with an odd look on her face. "And now it's back? D.C. - seriously??"

"No, it's a different CyberTek, in a manner of speaking," Coulson said with a distasteful look on his face. "So far it is producing life-support equipment, medical equipment, the like. We've got the FitzSimmons checking it out - in disguise, discreetly - and so far their report holds true. This is a different CyberTek altogether, though at least some of the employees are InHumans. The young von Strucker is allegedly there too, but so far he's been keeping a low profile-"

"D.C., Grant and Palamas are back there by now, and while the FitzSimmons probably got better with the undercover gig, I don't think that they're ready to go toe-to-toe with Grant and Kara in the field. Please tell me that May is running back-up."

"No, Mack and Joey are," Coulson shook his head. "May...she isn't dealing with her latest defeat all that well, she isn't ready to go into the field yet."

"What about general Talbot?" Lincoln spoke up suddenly, slightly startling the other two.

"What about him?" Coulson tried to look surprised, but stopped, when it became obvious that Lincoln wasn't buying it. "All right, for the moment the man is clean himself. After Malick's incentives program he is quite anti-Hydra, and has generally improved his character too." There was a pause, caused by look on Daisy's face, which was very skeptical of Talbot's improvements. "He is doing quite a bit of clean-up work at the moment, not tangling with Hydra or the like-"

"Only now Hydra itself is in downswing," Lincoln spoke thoughtfully, "so Talbot is actually benefiting by not getting involved with it, and going after more serious objectives. What?"he added for the benefit of the other two. "I'm not completely ignorant of S.H.I.E.L.D.-style politics, you know?"

"Good point," Coulson nodded sagely. "Anything else?"

Startled, (but not very) by the abrupt change of topic, Lincoln and Daisy exchanged looks, but decided against saying anything else, so they excused themselves instead. As they were leaving Coulson's presence, Lincoln noticed a particular look on the director's face, but pretended that he didn't.

_TBC..._


	2. Chapters 5-8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several weeks, or even months pass...

-5-

Days went by since this encounter, then weeks, then a few months. For a change, Grant clearly wasn't seeking a face-off with S.H.I.E.L.D., not anymore. Maybe it was because of Kara; maybe of some other reason; maybe he did get his closure after all. It doesn't matter; for the moment S.H.I.E.L.D. cannot go after him either, 'cause he doesn't exist. A Mr. Parks does, and for the moment the man is not the kind of character that gets into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s P.O.V. very often, because there's nothing extraordinarily dangerous and different about him, save for CyberTek itself...

"So, HTF is he able to do all that?" Daisy asked the FitzSimmons one morning when they were having breakfast together. (The entire team, not just the FitzSimmons - this went without saying). "Isn't cyborg technology somewhat unorthodox still?"

"No more than some of Ian Quinn's more radical pieces were," Leo replied with a grimace: he didn't like this development anymore than Daisy herself did. "Plus..."

"Yes?"

" 'Parks' had been patenting those pieces for a few years before the Hydra uprising occurred."

"But he isn't quite real - I mean, he isn't real, not like you or Jemma are-"

"Not exactly," Jemma shook her head. "We checked out the paper trail of Parks back from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s glory days, and they led to Cybertek, Grant and John Garrett. I wouldn't discount Raina, though she is apparently dead now, but most signs indicate that-"

"-Most of the technology was initially designed to keep people - like Garrett - alive, and was converted to more military means later," Daisy finished, not looking too pleased with this revelation. "So, the technology initially designed to save lives-"

"-Is saving lives, actually," Fitz finished, disgruntled himself. "It's quite sufficient for this sort of thing, frankly. Make no mistake, what Jemma and I are making, in our spare time too, is better, but-"

"-It doesn't get used in the field too often, I get it," Daisy finished. "It's a matter of what public wants vs. what public gets."

"Not really, and this sort of interaction with Fitz is my thing," Jemma finished with a small glare: even she and Leo didn't quite understand as to what has happened with Daisy and Lincoln: one day they were their usual selves, which included a lot of base-rocking sex, and the next day they weren't: they were something else, maybe even friends, but...without benefits.

Admittedly, the FitzSimmons themselves hadn't yet discovered the wonderful world of sex...especially with each other, but that was OK, they were going to become a proper couple themselves, soon enough, and then-

"Leo, Jemma," Melinda spoke up suddenly, startling the younger people, "there's someone for you on the phone."

"Oh?" Jemma took the offered reciever and spoke into it, (while the rest of the team pretended not to listen to maintain appearances - barely: it was a relatively slow morning for them). "Who is it?"

"Agent Simmons, hello. This is Kara Palamas. I sorry for not calling you earlier, but last time we met, you got out of our way so quickly that we decided not to bother you anytime soon."

"...I have no idea what you're talking about," Jemma spoke in such a voice that no one really bought it.

"...Yeah, you do. You and agent Fitz. His idea of imitating an Inhuman who got the worse end of the transformation bargain was smashing; he really looked like a character from a Ben H. Winters' novel-"

"I wasn't imitating anyone!" Fitz bellowed (since it was Fitz, he came more high-pitched than low, unfortunately). "I was honestly trying to grow a beard here! It's not exactly my fault that it came looking across...not as I've expected it to look."

"...Why would want to grow a beard? In addition to your intelligent, clever little hands you already look quite adorable," Kara sounded genuinely mystified over the phone. "In another life I would've asked Bobbi for her kinky stuff and we would do kinky stuff."

"..." said Fitz as he honestly contemplated hiding beneath the nearby table, here. 

"...But for various reasons this won't happen," Kara continued nonchalantly, "not even if you want me to."

"..."

"You'll probably have to ask agent Simmons to do this with you instead."

"..." said both FitzSimmons this time. 

"Kara," Lincoln spoke suddenly. "Why are you really calling us?"

"...Lincoln," Kara spoke in a much less mocking voice. "I'm calling agents Fitz and Simmons regarding something called Globulon Green. Have they heard of it?"

"Something or other, yes," Jemma spoke, cautiously, unsure if this topic will lead to new kinky stuff. "What about it?"

There was a pause, as Kara was clearly thinking it over. "By now you have figured out, that Grant - and by extension, Werner - had an inside person in your agency."

"Yes. Her name is Naomi, she was one of the technicians here, and," Lincoln was thinking over the words himself, "she wasn't Hydra, was she? Not just because she's got a wingspan of over 3.5 meters?"

"No, she is even less Hydra than Grant or I are," Kara admitted. "And honestly, even Grant surprised that she both fell for Werner and came with us for the ride. She genuinely considered her post in S.H.I.E.L.D. to be important, but don't worry. One of her compatriots will take over her duties soon enough, but that's not what this is about... Do you know Oscorp?"

"Maybe," Lincoln said, trying to hide the fact that until recently he had no idea about that place, (other than the general info that one could find on the Wikipedia). "What of it?"

"They're working with it, the Green," Kara's reply was almost emotionless now, measured. "Naomi's people don't know what it is - Naomi is one of their best - but they want to know. They also want you to know. Think about that, people, before making your decision."

"If you think that we'll be doing your dirty work," Daisy cannot help herself, her patience breaks at last.

"We would've done it ourselves, agent Johnson, but we need to check on someone in Europe," Kara's voice is back to mocking, and much less friendly than it was with FitzSimmons. "Blow on this, would you?" and she is gone.

Daisy turns red from embarrassment. "I'm sorry about this," she tells both May and the director. 

"Don't worry," Coulson says in a manner reminiscent of his earlier self, before he had killed Grant, and before the younger man returned from the dead. "It happens."  
May says nothing. Ever since her week of paralysis, this has happened more and more often with her.

-6-

"So, what is your take on things?" Lance muttered, as he and Bobbi maneuvered around Oscorp (on the way out already BTW). "Any in general or in particular."

"Honestly, I'm glad that we get to do corporate - or semi-corporate - espionage and not stick around the HQ more than we have to," Bobbi bit her lip, "and not because of Daisy and Lincoln. They're straightforward enough, and not that different from Jemma and Leo, just...more intense."

"Oh?" Lance raised a brow. "How so?"

"They stopped being just friend with benefits and are trying to figure out where they go from there," Bobbi replied, as they dodged the latest of Osborn's security measures (more robotics, BTW - Osborn was very big on robots, apparently, even worse than Stark). "The FitzSimmons...they just assumed that 'cause they are so wonderful as colleagues, they'll be the same in personal life...but I'm guessing they subconsciously aware that they are not...plus, they are really addicted to drama..." Bobbi shook her head. "Lincoln and Daisy are different. They don't like drama for various reasons, and they didn't really fight with each other either. Now... they are having one, and it's a big one."

"Yes, and the fact that Daisy's 'fertility cycle' is now something new and InHuman isn't making things easier," Lance grimaced. "You, with your period, are bad enough. Daisy, with her InHumanly mammoth one? Yeesh!"

"Please don't ever talk about this to either Daisy or Lincoln about this, especially in such a tone," Bobbi gave her partner a glare. "Or one of them just might punch you and you'll earn it. But seriously? This is in large part because of this fact, that apparently the women in Daisy's family line are either very fertile or not at all, depending on the time of the month or the season, I don't remember which one. Children are tricky, we know, don't we, so this just might be a deal maker or breaker for the two of them."

"Mm - Lincoln is more traditional, so he wants children, while Daisy, whose childhood sucked, isn't so sold on it."

"Sounds about right," Bobbi nodded, as they defeated yet another automatic machine gun (what was it with them ans Osborn?). "And then Grant came back."

"Daisy hates him. She never loved him."

"No, but Tripp, back when he was alive, was right, as he usually did. Skye never loved him, but she was still hurt in her womanly pride that Grant chose Garrett over her and never forgave him for that. Grant's obsession made it worse, mostly for him, but now it's an entire new situation. He is back, he has made a new life for himself, complete with Kara, and this is something that Daisy cannot easily swallow. Coulson was right in keeping her away from Grant, but the reasons are wrong: Grant is just bringing out her own darkness in all the wrong ways."

Lance gave his own significant other a look. "What?" Bobbi shrugged. "Daisy is not unlike May - she is a strong, powerful, self-sufficient woman...maybe even too much, as she doesn't need other people easily... Lincoln was something of a rebound guy for her, and while Grant was out of the picture and down on his luck, it worked. Now that he isn't, it doesn't. On top of everything else, Lincoln has to deal with the fact that he wasn't Daisy's first choice, and Daisy has to deal with her own flaws, on top of everything else."

"But they will make it?" Lance asked, quietly. 

"Daisy will have to accept that Lincoln isn't some sort of a surrogate Grant Ward but his own person with his own views and desires and adjust her attitudes accordingly. Lincoln will have to accept that he wasn't Daisy's number one choice and that she has her flaws and he will have to decide if he still wants her in his life - and vice versa."

"And if they don't?"

"If they don't," Bobbi muttered, as the two of them escaped from the Oscorp HQ building and into the greater NYC, "then that's the end of them as a couple. Daisy will find herself a new rebound guy or girl. Lincoln - a girl with whom he can have a family. They will still be friends - nothing more. And Coulson, if he cared about them, he would've forced the issue by now-"

It was then that Hunter and Morse got enveloped in some sticky artificial webbing. "Uh-uh, no messing with Ozzie," spoke a stranger in red and blue underroos. "He isn't the nicest guy in New York, but he doesn't deserve to be robbed."

The couple stared. "Who are you?" Lance finally asked. "You ain't Deadpool, he may be a smart ass, but a competent one. Are you some sort of a Republic-Democrat bipartisan character?"

"...I'm the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, thank you very much!" the newcomer said flatly. "And bipartisan, really?"

"Blue for the Democracts, Red for Republicans-"

"...Where did you come from?"

"Britain, the greatest country in the world!" Lance said brightly. "Ever heard of it?"

"..." What the self-proclaimed Spider-Man wanted to reply remained unknown, as two more figures swooped from the darkness on literal wings, grabbed the still ensnared agents and flew off.

"..." Spider-Man said something else entirely. "Wait till Stark hears about this."

-7-

"This is one strange night, even by standards before the entire Hive mess," Bobbi muttered, as she and Lance were cut out of the artificial webbing with some strange, exotic, but clearly effective blades. "So, are you friends of Lincoln and Daisy?"

"No," yet another one of them said in a flat tone. "We're people of Natomi - you know her as Naomi-"

"You're with Hydra?" Bobbi's heart sank. If Grant - and Hydra - were recruiting their own InHumans or whoever these people were-

"We serve no one, but our own rokoa," the spokesperson said flatly. "That's why she's the rokoa."

"And you?" Lance couldn't help but to ask.

"I'm the itaraak! I'm the champion! Now about the information?"

"Here," the stranger #2 said simply. "Shall we give them the copy?"

"Yes!"

"Hey, wait a second! This was a S.H.I.E.L.D. op-" Lance grew indignant.

"Only because our own human allies, Grant and Kara, couldn't help us," the itaraak wasn't impressed. "Natomi was right - you S.H.I.E.L.D. tribe people are good. Mind you, we find her attraction to this Werner person bizarre - he is a human, after all, himself-"

"And you're not?" Bobbi narrowed her eyes. She didn't like Werner very much herself, but the itaraak's attitude was something else.

"No. We're the strix. We've come to this world long ago, through our own technology, from Golarion, and while we're content here, for now, one day we may leave again. Natomi has tied herself to one of you wingless folk, this will slow her down, and she will leave him, or be left behind herself."

"Planning on doing this some time soon?" Lance said flatly: he too didn't care much about Werner, but due to FitzSimmons love of drama, not to mention Daisy and Lincoln's issues, the last thing he and Bobbi wanted was more musings about the flaws of love.

"No, we like it here, in this dimension," the itaraak said firmly, "but you never know..."

As if to prove the point, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man arrived on his own webbing, since he couldn't fly, (unlike the Iron Man, say). "Thought that you could escape me, did you? Guess you didn't know about the spider-trackers-"

"...As I was saying," the itaraak didn't miss a beat, "we like it here. Where else we would see a man running around in pajamas without being institutionalized?"

"I," the Spider-Man said with enforced dignity, "am a super hero-"

"I think that you're trying to hedge your bets between Cap and the Iron Man, wearing both of their colors," Lance didn't back down. "You sure that you're not a politician? I mean, compared to Deadpool-"

Spider-Man lost his mellow and began to explain to Lance and to the others that he was not a politician, and as for Deadpool-

"Excuse me," Bobbi had had enough of manliness for one night, including Lance's. She unzipped her top and flashed the blue-and-red super hero, who went into a stupor, as any red blooded man would do, (as well as few women).

"How did you do that?" the itaraak asked, more thoughtful than awed.

"Demonic hell beast," Bobbi smiled - very ruefully, sadly even. "This is what we do. Now about this Green thing?"

The negotiations began in earnest.

-8-

"...and that concluded our portion of the evening," Lance finished their debrief to Coulson, May and the others later on that morning, for their mission took them most of the night to fulfill. "There is a new aspiring Avenger in town, apparently, and this Naomi chick isn't even an InHuman, but a denizen from a parallel dimension, and her kind had struck a deal with Ward."

"How so?" Coulson leaned forwards, eagerly curious.

"Apparently Ward knew about Naomi - whatever her real name was - a long time before the recent events. Since she and her kind didn't feature in the Hydra uprising, apparently the itaraak was telling the truth - they themselves aren't Hydra. Maybe Ward and Palamas aren't Hydra either, who knows? Either way, both sides kept mum about what they knew, until Werner appeared on the scene, and then the entire slog with Grant and Kara's own return..."

"So, these strix knew about Hydra but kept quiet," Coulson didn't look too convinced. "Maybe they aren't Hydra, but they certainly aren't friends of ours either. I was thinking that Lincoln and Daisy should talk to them, but since they appear to be working with CyberTek - at least in part - of their own volition, this should probably take some more strategizing."

"True, but this would be the best for them," Bobbi decided to take the plunge - her and Lance, Leo and Jemma, the itaraak and the rokoa of the strix, and now they were back to Lincoln and Daisy (with May and Coulson themselves on the side). "Right now what they got going primarily is their proximity for each other, so if you want them to work it out, you got to work with that primarily too. Otherwise, as they drift apart, things will only get harder and worse."

Coulson looked away. "I thought about this," he confessed, "but even if the jury is out on Lincoln, when it comes to Daisy, we shove anything down her throat - or so she thinks - she'll retaliate twice as hard. If she'll think that we're pairing her with Lincoln on purpose, she'll break things up with him for sure, and I suspect that Lincoln will not be any better. I tried talking to him when they were just beginning to have problems; he told that he would follow my orders as a director, but as one man to another? No. He... I don't know. I certainly hope that he loves Daisy, but he's got a lot of ideas that are weird; he is treating this as one InHuman in regards to another, and I'm not sure that this isn't their real problem - Daisy's values aren't InHuman, but more American-"

"Still. Send them out. They are already team mates. This can be enough for them to become partners in the other meaning of this word. They already seem to have broken up and firmly relegated each other to the friend zone. We remember what happened with the FitzSimmons and Tripp and the friend zone. Do we want a repeat of this?"

"You think that they can work this out," Coulson said quietly.

"Right now, it's touch or go, and they need the touch," Bobbi shook her head. "On their own, they will probably drift apart and find new people. You want this? Fine, but then stop talking about what a tragedy this is, because it apparently is not. Otherwise, give them a push. They will hate you for a while, but then they'll forgive you."

"But if they don't love each other?"

Bobbi exhaled through her teeth. "We're done, sir. I may be a demonic Hell beast, but one that knows about lust and love and when a person's got neither. So, we're done. Just - don't start talking to me and Hunter again about the tragedy, 'cause you don't really care." She whirled around and was gone.

"What was that all about?" Coulson blinked.

"Bob takes affairs of the heart very seriously, sir," Hunter is serious himself. "What you've got with agent May already got her hackles raised in a bad way. Lincoln and Daisy are making it worse. Sir, since you aren't going to be making any changes to either situation, I think that I should take Bob into the field more, or things will get even tenser her - and in a bad way. Think on that."

And Coulson did. 

_TBC..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, we got Spider-Man's cameo. (Got to love him in the latest CW trailer). Odds are that his own archnemesis, the Green Goblin, is somewhere in the wings too. Squee! But for the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it is routine as usual.


	3. Chapters 9-12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi Morse IS a demonic Hell beast, but a seductive one.

-9-

It was 8 days later, and Lincoln and Daisy saw Lance walking through the streets looking pissed. "Where, where is this blackguard," he snarled, "he and his strumpet?"

"Are you talking about Grant and Kara or Werner and Naomi?" Lincoln asked brightly, as he interjected into Hunter monologue, (which contained, oddly enough, plenty of Italian curses, something that Hunter wasn't prone to before).

Lance blinked. "Werner is the baby Strucker, and Naomi is?"

"You know, apparently, one of those parallel universe entities who can fly and don't like humans-"

"Oh, right, you mean Natomi," Hunter nodded sourly. "Why would I care about her and Werner? Never mind. Ward. Where is he?"

"In CyberTek?" Lincoln suggested brightly.

Hunter gave the younger man a look. "Are you trying to be clever here?" he said flatly. "Of course they are in CyberTek- never mind, here they are." And sure enough, a rather impressive limo-like car had stopped, and out popped Grant and Kara, dressed very smartly too. "That's a new look for you two, ever since you stopped being dead," Lance twitched, then winced from the bruises on his face (he was more worse for wear than the usual). "Is it about Bob?"

"I see her Hydra ex-boyfriend has already had you roughened-up before their wedding," Kara said tartly as she sat in a somewhat provocative pause. "Do you want to rescue her or to move on?"

"Kara, please," Lance exhaled. "I won't beg. I know that you and Bob have a very bad relationship. But! You are a decent human being, or at least a ghost, and so's Ward over here. Either help me, or - don't mock me." He paused. "You weren't behind this, were you?"

"No," Kara emphatically shook her head, practically hissing. "After what Whitehall's men had done to me? Never, not even to Bobbi. She did herself - she needed Varaha's help to bury me, and she's that sort of a demonic Hell beast, so she flirted with him to get it done - but Varaha's special himself, and in the end he proved to be a bigger beast than even Bobbi can handle - and now he's going to marry her at last."

"Why?" Hunter asked, as he got into car, followed by Lincoln and (more reluctantly) by Daisy. 

"Because he thinks that she is his soul mate slash goddess slash partner," Grant shrugged. "Coulson once accused me of being obsessed by Skye. He was probably right. Well, Varaha didn't have anyone like this, and moreover, he's an ogre, so he just got worse instead."

"An ogre?" Lance leaned forwards. 

"Yes. Slightly shorter than me, slightly wider than Mack in the shoulder, heavier than either of us, and all muscle," Grant shrugged. "He plans to go through you like a razor through a bar of wet soap."

"I may not be a owner of a fancy new company," Lance growled. "I do not have your organizational skills and whatnot. I do not have Ka-" he broke off into a cough. 

"Bobbi is a flirt, and she needs someone - or S.H.I.E.L.D. - to guide her on straight and narrow," Grant sighed. "She's used to - first - having S.O. making her decisions for her, and - second - the S.H.I.E.L.D. guidebook for the same reason. Your time off S.H.I.E.L.D. might've helped, but hey! She isn't paper, she's plastic, there's a limit how much you can do with her."

"I'm not doing anything to her, if this is what you're implying!" Lance spat. "Bob, Bobbi, she's my friend, and underneath the slinky seductress is a real person-"

"Ha!" Kara put mountains of disdain into the single syllable.

"Kara, don't," Grant said simply. "You're not Hydra either; you know that people have flaws - you and me, Hunter, Morse, the others-"

"Fine," Kara settled down with a huff. "Lance, my mind is made up - you've got to rescue Bobbi, 'cause otherwise it'll be just me against the two of you and I cannot deal with so much manly testosterone in the atmosphere."

"Thanks - I mean it," Lance huffed.

"Excuse me, Kara," Lincoln said quietly, "but how do you know Lance and Bobbi? You were dead-"

"We got to haunt them for a while."

"Say what?!"

-10-

_And so, the now diminished core team of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s agents had departed, finished by Mack with tears in his eyes. Bobbi and Lance were left on their own, and for once - well, maybe not for once - they didn't want it._

_Ok, they just didn't want it - period. Bobbi had been a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent throughout her career - period. There was this rather unfortunate stint with ARC-7, but it was gone now, plus Bobbi's later actions in S.H.I.E.L.D. had burned this bridge just as thoroughly as the last events in the Russian Federation did._

_Lance, on the other hand, had never been a proper agent - more of an associate. He wasn't as closely bonded to S.H.I.E.L.D. as Bobbi, but he was a people person, and honestly, as he told Bobbi, as they went into their hotel room, this wasn't how he imagined that he'll get Bobbi all to himself for a while._

_"I know," Morse admitted to her partner, "it's just that, you know, I- we- used to be this part of a great big network of people, and now it's just the two of us. It's weird, I'm not sure just how much I like it-"_

"Ha!" _spoke someone right behind the two former agents, loudly enough to startle them - after being quiet enough not to be noticed, which added the further contrast. The two ex-agents whirled around - not an easy feat on a narrow staircase - and saw no one else._

"Well, the walls are thin here and sound carries," Lance said, trying to sound like his normal self, (which, admittedly, had already been badly strained by the entire Russian business). "Maybe it was from one of the rooms."

"Let's just get into ours," Bobbi said, and the pair did just this - faster, than how it was intended.

("This was me," Kara pointed out the obvious. "I really wasn't going to establish contact with them; Grant was right at that time but then the times changed and so did our plan.")  
_  
Once they were inside, Lance and Bobbi...didn't feel anything change. There was nothing suspicious in the atmosphere or the hotel room space, there was no one either, there wasn't anything, once you got past the obvious (duh). Honestly, the incident on the stairs was probably just that - an incident: the hotel walls were thin here and sound could carry, if it was loud enough._

_On one level, Bobbi felt relief; on the other - almost disappointment. Oddity or not, that incident had reminded her of what they'd lost when they agreed to take the hit (for S.H.I.E.L.D., really); yes, a vacation was a nice idea; being debriefed was something else._

_"Bobbi, relax," Lance said as Bobbi just paced around the room, trying to get rid of her excess energy (or nerves, she wasn't sure what) that just bubbled beneath her skin. "We're safe for the moment, Ward is gone-"_

_"...Yeah, about that," Ward appeared out of nowhere like the ghost he was. "I'm coming back, Kara's with me, we just wanted you to know this beforehand and not throw us any wakes - even the traditional S.H.I.E.L.D. ones. You know, the ones where there aren't any?"_

_Lance grabbed his gun and fired several rounds. The shots went through the man and shattered the flowers on the window still and the window pane._

_"Well, this went as I expected," Grant, on the other hand, was unharmed - the rounds went through him with barely a ripple. "Kara, you didn't have to worry."_

_"You idiot!" Kara stomped over to her fellow ghost (?) and slapped him on the shoulder. "Please don't scare me like this ever again!" She turned to Bobbi and gave her a look. "Don't you hate it when Lance does something like this?"_

_Bobbi goggled and just sat into the nearby chair. The door opened and in came an elderly gentleman (well, closer to Coulson's age than to May's or Mack's) who looked around with curiosity. Murphy's laws being what they are, Grant and Kara somehow became invisible between one moment and the next, so-_

_"What were you kids doing here?" the man asked Lance and Bobbi with obvious, not faked, nonchalance._

_"Shooting at ghosts," Lance spoke, too shaken to lie._

_"Hm." The man took a sniff of the opened bottle of booze on the table and promptly threw it out of the already broken window. "Zebrovich hasn't changed one bit - he still dilutes everything from Irish whiskey to beer with this fermented bamboo crap. No wonder you got to shoot at ghosts after this swill. Girl, you seem to be in a better shape than your man-"_

_"No, I'm not. I'm really not!" Bobbi said brightly, "and who are you, anyhow?"_

_"Call me Dominic Fortune," the man shrugged. "I'm a friend of Coulson's."_

_"Oh?!"_

_"Yeah, come on," Dominic rolled his eyes. "Ghosts or not, you people don't really want to stick around here, if you're going to be shooting at each other. Girl, help me up!"_

_"I'm the stable one!" Lance protested weakly as he put down the shaking gun, and helped Bobbi onto her feet. It was done well enough, except that Bobbi accidentally hit Lance in the nose. With her breast._

_"Oh yeah, you're really stable," Dominic rolled his eyes as Lance and Bobbi pushed each other away, and Bobbi fell back into her seat. "Hilarious, too. Girl, ever think about cutting down on burgers? You are getting too smug in the tush."_

_"I like him," Kara's ghost spoke silently, forming words silently with her mouth alone while hovering over Dominic. "He's clever!"_

__("...and this was how we met again, for the first time - technically," Kara finished telling to Lincoln, as Daisy had went off to change - the other two agents already had, for they were crashing a wedding here. "Later on that night, of course, Grant and I returned to the doofus and his Hell beast and apologized, but it was a second time, so it doesn't really count. Agent Daisy, what are you wearing?"

"I was feeling nostalgic," the other woman shrugged, as she emerged wearing a pink dress. "Besides, I don't want to equip you here, 'Mrs. Ward'."

"Oh, we aren't married yet," Grant shrugged. "First we were dead, then CyberTek, then when we finally settled down for the wallpaper, Varaha called about his kidnapping of Morse. Daisy, for some reason I thought that you were more bottom-heavy than you are. How'd you do that?"

"Watch Kara's butt instead," Daisy glared.

"He prefers my face - he finds it prettier," Kara said brightly. "Lincoln, which part do you find prettier - her face or her butt?"

"..." Fortunately, before Lincoln could answer, the plane landed.)

-11-

The assemblage of people was numerous and varied, all of whom were dressed with various signs of power and prestige - just think Ian Quinn's Maltese shindig on a bigger scale. "I'm almost tempted to go and see if there's gravitonium in the basement," she told Lincoln as the two of them trailed after Kara and the other two men.

"...Are you trying to make Grant jealous?" Lincoln asked her in a quieter voice.

"More like Kara," Daisy shrugged. "She seemed to be quite happy talking to you."

"We're just friends," Lincoln said, sounding not quite happy. "Kara is a good woman who had been served a poor hand."

"Ward?"

"Morse and Hunter I would say," Lincoln grimaced. "I appreciate that Bobbi was trying to give me advice about you, but I don't think that I wanted it very much. I mean, yeah, Morse is complex like the others in the agency, including you, but still, firstly, she did hurt Ms. Palamas, and second, she doesn't deserve to be married against her will to an ogre."

"I'm sure that Grant and Kara were exaggerating," Daisy said brightly, as they moved to the front end of the throng. "We're not going to be seeing a REAL ogre, now are we?"

"I don't know," Lincoln confessed, as they finally caught up to Grant and Kara, with Hunter being further in the front, confronting the man named Varaha. The man was huge, possibly smaller, shorter, than Grant was, but still he was towering over Hunter, built like an ape with a distinctly pig-like face. He was not impressed by Hunter's current bravado, and Bobbi, who despite being a tall, powerfully-built woman herself, was dwarfed by Varaha too.

Daisy frowned. She - and the others - were standing against the sun, so it was hard to see some of the details and the bright light could play tricks on the eyes; Bobbi's wedding dress, was unconventional and lovely, (really brought the color on her cheeks), but for a moment there Daisy thought that Bobbi's back had sprouted wings-

"Lance! Lance Hunter! Please! In this hour of great need, don't abandon me!" Bobbi's yell, nothing like how Daisy heard Bobbi sound before: cool, confident, professional, etc, came across the plaza.

Varaha smiled, a genuinely evil laugh, reminiscent of how Garrett used to laugh before Deathlok had killed him. Hunter spat and rolled up his sleeves, his body posture reminiscent of 'bring it on'.

Varaha stopped laughing and burst out of his suit, his body swelling even further, transforming him from an ogre-like human into... a giant wild boar. Well, maybe not wild, but seriously pissed-of all the same, and with tusks like those protruding out of the lower jaw, Daisy realized that even Lance had a gun, (which she didn't remember packing), he was outnumbered here; she and Lincoln had to get in front-

"Naomi!" Grant yelled, startling Daisy, for one, and something or someone streaked across the sky, dropping into Lance's hands...a silvery lance or a spear, appropriately enough. Not exactly high-tech devices, here, but Lance grabbed it and twisting around, dodged the boar's charge, while striking the shapechanger's side with the spear's point.

It drew blood. The boar stopped, even as it whirled around and stared down at Lance. "Well now, you thing of darkness," Lance yelled, "not everything is going your way, eh?"

The boar charged again, straight on, but this time Lance used the spear to vault over the swine, scoring another hit in the process, this time on the back. It wasn't a big wound, but Varaha was clearly affected by it. He charged once more, changing his shape again, this time into a more hybrid form, more ogre-like, somewhat, but still with a porcine snout and tusks.

Lance Hunter charged too, shifting his grip on the spear. He dodged from Varaha's wild swing and struck deep - with the edge of the blade, not the point. It still cut easily, and Varaha fell, rolling down in a heap. 

Slowly, Lance Hunter approached the other man with the spear at guard. Abruptly, Varaha got back onto his feet and there was a blur of motion, and suddenly Varaha was back down, this time pierced completely through, this time completely dead. His flesh fell off in black coal-like chunks off his bones, and that was enough.

The crowd exhaled as one, (Daisy wasn't sure if this included her and Lincoln) and surged forwards. 

"No," Grant said as he stepped forwards and stood between the crowd and Lance, who was currently being hugged by Bobbi, who was shaking and sobbing from relief. 

(Daisy frowned: again, she couldn't be bigger, but Bobbi looked different from her regular self: she seemed taller. Then again, she was having trouble focusing on the other/third couple: quite a few faces in the crowd were changing, acquiring an InHuman appearance or something similar, quite a few pieces of clothing were getting ripped.)

"Bored now, Stephanie," Grant told the apparent ringleader, a blonde woman, (who looked a bit like Bobbi from the back), and manifested a ball of blue-hot flame in his hands. This was something new, as the crowd drew back, clearly intimidated and/or surprised.

"We'll be leaving now - Barbara?" Kara spoke from Grant's side. "Take Hunter and let's leave. Johnson, this involves you too, or are you about to merge with Malick over here and the rest of her friends in one sibling of an ecstasy?"

There was a pause that Lincoln used to move subtly away from his co-worker. "It sounded better in Russian," Kara said with a bright smile. "Well?"

Daisy gave into her urge and released her powers. The crowd scattered like nine pins in a 6 m radius. "That's what we thought," Grant smiled a tiger-like smile, as his own energy manifestation exploded in the sky in a wave of stinging heat. "People, it's been nice hanging around the old crowd - it's nice, but nothing more. As the Cavalry sometimes says - we're done."

-12-

"...This was epic," Kara said a while later, after they had safely departed the late Varaha's villa and were flying back to the U.S. "And we're really lucky that no one tried to sabotage our flight back, either."

"True," Lance shrugged, as he changed back into his more regular clothing now. "Bob, how are you doing?"

"Fine, especially after Daisy loaned me her bra," Bobbi shrugged as she joined the other 5 at last. "Thank you, Lance, for saving me. And Kara, Grant-"

"Don't. Let's just assume that we have come full circle or something." The look on Kara's face belied her easy-going words. "Maybe we're friends nowadays or something. I accepted the fact that yes, you're a demonic Hell beast, even if a good-natured one, a good one. Period. You just cannot be original and need a donor, that is all."

"Hey, not true! Stop speaking of Bobbi as if she's disabled!" Lance snapped. "I mean yeah, free will is a bugger, but-"

"But all you need to do is get married and she'll probably become fully human," Kara stuck out her tongue. 

"Please don't joke about that," Bobbi said in a very quiet tone. "It isn't funny."

"I'm not being funny, I'm being mocking," Kara shrugged. "Maybe even deliberately cruel - I don't know. Guess seeing you out there, deliberately helpless, triggered my own trip down the memory lane, so now I'm dealing with in a mature, reasonable manner."

"She wants a hug of her own," Grant told Bobbi, neutrally. "Please?"

There was a pause, since obviously Grant wasn't used to appearing polite in public. It was filled by Bobbi who followed Grant's advice. 

"The Hell?" Kara snapped - to Grant. "If I wanted a hug, I would ask you myself!"

"Ok," Grant shrugged and gave one to her here and now. 

Kara's face twitched, giving her a very young look. "Oh, why not," Hunter muttered and joined the other three. "Group hug?"

"...This is supposed to be about Bobbi," Kara muttered into his chest. "You're HER hero?"

"About that," Lincoln said slowly, as he and Daisy stood at the periphery of the group, (and not being very happy about their position), "can you please tell us the WHOLE story?"

"It's a long one," Kara scrunched her nose, "Lincoln. The short version starts with the fact that agent Morse over here IS a demonic Hell beast."

"Kara!" Bobbi flushed. "It isn't funny even when Lance says it! If you want to call me that, call me a succubus instead!"

"What?" Daisy blinked as Bobbi sighed, turned around, and sprouted horns, bigger breasts, wings, a tail - proportionally bigger breasts: all the attributes of a canonical succubus, in short. 

Lincoln wasn't sure about Daisy, but his mind went kind of pink and moist for a while there: "Nipple?"

_TBC..._


	4. Chapters 13=16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no rest for the agents, and their personal interactions only make it more intense.

-13-

...When Lincoln, (he wasn't entirely sure about Daisy), came to his senses, he heard Hunter talking on the phone. To May.

"Yes, May, everything is fine. One of Bobbi's old 'friends' was in town, we got antsy, I got Daisy and Lincoln to back us out, the end. It's over now and we're returning home. We can always go to some other, more closely located S.H.I.E.L.D. base, instead. Why, what's happening? She hang up," he turned to Bobbi and the others. "What gall! As the pig had told the eagle-"

"Lance, stop," Bobbi said simply. "Daisy and Lincoln are back with us."

"How long we were out?" Daisy muttered.

"For less than an hour. This is what I do - what I can do," Bobbi muttered, very unhappy. "As far as demonic Hell beasts go, I'm what you people call a succubus. I suck-"

"No, you don't," Lincoln had an epiphany. "Only literally, as Jiaying had - sort of."

Bobbi chewed on her lips. "If you're trying to cheer me up, it sucks. If you don't - stop even more so."

"Not until I said my piece," Lincoln sat down as he got himself to think. "Once upon a time, in the not so recent past, you, Bobbi Morse, gave me a very rousing speech about love and loss and relationships - I was moved," he grimaces bitterly, "I was really moved. I want to believe you - and then I remembered what Ms. Palamas told me about you, and now that I know that you aren't human, it all makes sense. You hate who you are, don't you?"

"...Lincoln. What are you talking about?" Daisy blinked. "Morse never-"

"It was some time after the mess with Oscorp," Lincoln shrugged. "Bobbi cornered me in the library - well, it's what the FitzSimmons call it-"

"I know the place-"

"-yeah, I met her there," Lincoln nodded, "she gave me a speech that we thought Coulson would give us, or maybe the FitzSimmons, even May. It was about the virtues of love and not giving up, and I believed her - or would've, if we hadn't talked to Ms. Palamas over there," Lincoln indicated in a direction where Grant, and Kara, and Lance were pretending (now) to be drinking beer, "about the entire mess including the two of them and Hunter."

"Oh, and this makes it ok? The fact that she's a succubus or whatever?" Daisy sputtered.

"Yes, because Daisy, we aren't like ordinary people, we don't work, or think, in ordinary ways!" Lincoln shook his head. "You got a differently-shaped brain; I, as well, as Ward over there, have another organ in my chest; Joey got ganglia-"

"Did you talk to Jemma?" Kara snapped. "I once had to treat agents regarding roundworms. It wasn't fun."

"He's got nerve clusters where ordinary people don't," Lincoln shook his head. "Ms. Palamas, don't pretend to be obtuse. You're not. You're very intelligent. You understand my point."

"Your InHumanity, so to use a term, doesn't excuse what Morse, or Grant, have done," Kara grimaced, "but neither must it be kept out of the equation completely. I get what you're saying, I'm just annoyed that Bobbi tried to steal my life from me - and she succeeded, sort of. It's more ok now than it was before Puerto Rico, but I'm getting a handle on it. So does Grant, for that matter."

"You and Grant are two different people," Daisy began, but the older woman interrupted her:

"Agreed. But he was with me when no one else, including you, the rest of the agency, director Coulson wasn't. That alone makes him very important to me. And now that we're back from the dead and are going on going, he is even moreso now."

"You don't love him," something clicked in Daisy's brain.

"Perhaps," Kara gave her a look. "But on the other hand, your significant other has given you a choice-"

"-to be either a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent or her partner," Lincoln finished, "otherwise I will stop being myself, as Cal did when he married Jiaying-"

"You people are messed up," Lance finished saying, "or rather - 'us people', since it involves Bobbi and me. Where did our lives go, Bob? I remember the times when all we had to worry about were Hydra and the organized crime."

The others just gave him a look.

Lance just shrugged.

-14-

"Daisy! Lincoln! Hunter and Morse!" the FitzSimmons exclaimed as one, (something that didn't happen that often anymore), as the other four entered the S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ building. "Can you believe what has happened?"

"As long as it didn't involve a Hydra attack we're happy," Daisy shook her head. "It didn't involve a Hydra attack, right?"

"Of course not!" the FitzSimmmons exchanged a look. "What'd happen to you? A Hydra attack in question?"

"More like an old admirer of mine tried to kidnap and to marry me, so Lance had to set him straight; he got Daisy and Lincoln to tag along as potential backup, so here we are," Bobbi shrugged. "BTW, here's a little souvenir for you, Jemma, since you got upset that you missed out on the Oscorp mission." She pulled out a bundle and it was her wedding dress from her terminated wedding, now more re-fitted to suit Jemma rather than Bobbi herself.

"Ooh, it's beautiful," Jemma gushed. "Where'd you get it?"

"A custom job," Bobbi said brightly, "maybe some day in the future you'll wear it?"

"Will I?" Jemma chirped, very enthusiastically. "Leo, what do you think?"

"I'm stunned," Leo did indeed look like that. "I'm stunned into speechlessness."

"Then just say 'I do' and forever hold your peace, mate," Lance shrugged. "It's not rocket science, you know?"

Leo gave him a very intense gaze. "Can we get to our news, please?" he told the other agents. 

"Be our guest-"

"Deathlok came by."

"Really?" Daisy perked up, before deflating (somewhat) once more. "Lord, and we've all but ditched him after the events with Dr. List. I'm guessing that this wasn't exactly a friendly visit?"

"Kind of yeah, it wasn't," Jemma admitted, sounding just as guiltily as Daisy did. "He was upset about us forgetting about him, but, FYI, all this time he's been a captive. In Italy. By the Nautilus club."

"Who're they?" Lincoln asked with genuine curiosity.

"A group of people who make Ian Quinn look like Tony Stark," the FitzSimmons exchanged looks with each other.

"Don't really know either, so this doesn't really help," Lincoln shrugged. "But I do know Stark by reputation so I have some idea."

"It's probably an incorrect one," Jemma grimaced. "Tony isn't the man he tries to appear-"

"Anyways, Deathlok? How is he? I remember him from my captivity at Dr. List's," Lincoln decided to change topics. "He seemed a good man back then - or cyborg, you know?"

"He is," Leo admitted, "so us forgetting about him with all the Hydra excitement was a bad thing." He shook his head. "So now Mike isn't feeling very friendly towards us on one hand, and on the other he needed Phil's signature to visit his son-"

"Say what?" Daisy glared. "WTF are we doing to Mike and his life? We're different from John Garrett, correct?!"

"This isn't what it sounds like!" Jemma yelled back quickly. "For a while, Ace has been living and studying at the Island - it's S.H.I.E.L.D.'s kindergarten/elementary school sort of thing. It is mostly for the younger children of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, such as Ace! It's just, just, this location is heavily classified so Mike needs the written permission of the director and Nick Fury or Maria Hill to go there without any problems."

"Well, did he get them? The permits?" Daisy's glare didn't really abate.

"Yes, but apparently in all the excitement Tony Stark had learned that Phil's alive and has come over here to talk," Jemma blanched. "He, uh, doesn't look very happy."

"He's right behind us, isn't he?" Lance realized the subtle, yet abrupt shift in the discussion.

He was.

-15-

For Phil Coulson, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., the day was still somewhat routine, though it was still quite unpleasant: the president Ellis had yelled at him some, the man was reasonable, (unlike his cousin Donald the billionaire), but not exactly likable, even to his friends, and Phil Coulson wasn't exactly one of them. Still, there were still jobs to be done, plans to be made and carried out, and his people to reassure, which was what he was to do when Tony Stark walked in, followed by most of his core team (save for May) and by a very miserable and upset-looking Maria Hill, as well as a couple of young women who looked vaguely familiar to him.

"Well?" Tony muttered to his people. "Is it him? Is it Coulson? Is he alive?"

"We have no idea about who he is," a redhead muttered (looked vaguely like Pepper Potts but was not her). "But judging from his aura? He is clearly alive - and human too, not a demon, vampire, or something else."

“Well, this is a relief to be sure,” Tony muttered, before glaring at the other man. “Coulson, WTF? Back when Fury was in charge, you people did their best to convince me and the others that you were good, honest people, defenders of the world and the like. Now, just a few years after the whole NYC incident, you are back where you started? In the shadows? What gives? You do not trust me – fine, I can work with that, this was how we began, remember? I do not know why you tried to earn my trust when you just wanted to go back to square one, but whatever. I can live with that, actually. However, Cap, seriously? You had the biggest crush on him, remember?”

“Tony,” Coulson looked at Hill, who would not meet his gaze, “this is complex.”

“Really? How?” Tony did not sound very impressed. “Do tell.”

“Well, sir,” another man spoke from behind Coulson, as he and his wife flanked S.H.I.E.L.D.’s director from both sides, “director Coulson here had died, for one thing, and as someone who can relate, me and Kara can tell you that the entire dying-and-returning to life thing isn't too easy or simple. Now, former assistant director Hill - I believe that you wanted a talk with us?”

"Ah, you must be the new head of CyberTek," Tony turned around. "Parks, right?"

"His name is Grant Ward, and he is supposed to be dead," Maria Hill ground out, "and the alien threat that had animated his corpse had also been dealt with - supposedly."

"I have no idea of whom you're talking about," Grant said brightly, "and there is no alien threat animating my corpse - I am part alien myself, apparently, so I've come here not so much to meet you, as to be classified or indexed and get that unpleasantness out of the way?" To emphasize the point he lit up a small fire on top of his finger, a small one, but a hot one too.

"Interesting," Tony drummed his fingers on the nearest wall. "You're really are half-alien, and there are rumors of Norman Osborn being not-quite-human either. Is it some sort of a thing in the business world nowadays? I blame the Nautilus club and their latest fad-"

"Phil," Maria Hill pinched her nose. "This is exactly the sort of thing you were supposed to be preventing as the director. And agent Palamas-"

"That's _Ms. Palamas_ , actually," former agent 33 shook her head. "I may not have died, but I have left S.H.I.E.L.D. behind. Can't say that I don't regret it, but I don't regret it _enough_."

"Why?" the other woman didn't back down. "You reached a high rank among us, did many missions, did many good things-"

"I did it all so that my girlfriend wouldn't leave me behind, but in the end, she still did," Kara shrugged. "Since then I went through some very bad patches," she tapped her face, switching off her mask, revealing her scars, "and am afraid that I no longer find myself compatible to S.H.I.E.L.D. and its goals. I'm here for moral support to my man, so if you'll excuse me, I would like to get this entire Index thing over with as much as he does. Agents?" she effortlessly shifted her position towards Daisy, the FitzSimmons and the others, very much a high society lady (the U.S. version). "If you please?"

-16-

"...You didn't have to do this," Bobbi told Kara a while later, as they were all in the lab, including the FitzSimmons, who had been busy preparing to Index Grant, **cough.**

"True, but I decided to anyhow," Kara shrugged "In part I did because of you, Morse, 'cause the two of under the same roof? No, just no, I never cared much for soap operas. But in a bigger part? Grant and I are a package deal nowadays, I do not appreciate you people trying to break us up. Kid," she shifted to Lincoln, "I have really enjoyed our Internet chats and all, but as I said before, if you don't need to, just don't. I ain't budging."

"...I have no idea what you're talking about," Lincoln said blankly, not unlike how Coulson behaved in a similar situation. 

"Of course not," Kara didn't bat an eye too, even as she kept it on the FitzSimmons, who were listening to their discussion with clear curiosity without even pretending to do something else anymore. "You just have been playing Grant's ex-girlfriend-is-special angle every once in a while on a regular basis-"

"This isn't a play!" Unexpectedly, Lincoln had exploded. "This is imprinting! It's real! It's part of who we are, what we are-"

"Stop," Grant spoke slowly, but with such feeling that Lincoln stopped shouting. "We understand it, really."

"Speak for yourself," Jemma muttered quietly, but Grant heard and responded all the same:

"Here's the problem - the free will. In Hydra, it was 'compliance will be rewarded'; for the InHumans, especially those that didn't interact much with the rest of the world, Lincoln's generation and older, it's more of a 'what will be will be, que sera - sera'. The two ideas are different enough, but neither places much emphasis on free will. In the past, Lincoln talked about stories, how the world runs on them, and I understood them - believe me, I understood them. When I made my choice to follow John, I knew that the story won't be pretty, but I still went with it - because 'sacrifices for the greater good over personal' must be made. Oh, that's S.H.I.E.L.D.'s motto - never mind. What I'm saying, Campbell, that the choice, in the end, was mine, and I paid for it. One's future is one's hands, no matter if you're an InHuman or not. For me, Daisy will always be a part of what could've been, Kara has her own regrets, but people can live with them - just ask the FitzSimmons about Will Daniels."

"No, you really don't!" Jemma told Lincoln faux-brightly. 

"...me and Kara know that they saw the files, that Will had been Hydra, that Jemma had been really lucky on the alien planet in so many ways," Grant continued nonchalantly, "but they still regret his loss. Campbell, sometimes people - especially in the West, 'cause Third World countries are another thing - have to choose, or decide to choose, to do things they regret in the future."

"So what? Ms. Palamas should marry you even though you're imprinted on Daisy?" Lincoln glared, lightning playing around his fingers. "Neither of you will be all that happy in your wedding. That's free will?"

"Thank God Whitehall didn't get you - you would've made a wonderful Hydra agent for sure!" Kara stepped between Lincoln and Grant, her eyes cold and hard, though they weren't glowing as those of the men in question from the inside (literally). "Campbell, why do you care? My 'story' didn't involve you, but the heroic lovers over there!" she jabbed her finger at Hunter and Morse, who were watching the interaction silently now, their own faces hard. "You believe that the world is run by stories and destinies? So marry the princess over here and stop angsting!" she jabbed another finger at Daisy now. 

"Don't tell me whom to marry, woman! Don't tell me about destinies!" Lincoln bellowed. "My destiny was to marry Daisy, Jiaying told me so herself! Few people got handed such an honor in Li Shi! But then Jiaying proved to be a liar! Her words and actions - false! But it doesn't matter, because her promise did come true, or does come true in regards to her daughter at least! My fate is what it is what Jiaying said it is so don't speak to me about free will! The universe doesn't believe in it!"

"Whoa mama!" Leo told Jemma - a bit too loudly, as everyone, including Lance and Bobbi, shifted to look at them. "And here I thought that we had problems!"

If looks could kill, the FitzSimmons would've been dead 6 times over. As it was, they were able to survive...but they did put a protective energy barrier between them and the others in the lab - just in case.

_TBC..._


	5. Chapters 17-20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May gets into trouble. Say what?

-17-

It was another 8 or so days later, and the results from the (admittedly private) explosion... weren't felt so much by most of the agency. Daisy and Lincoln had been...somewhat on the outs by now, and while there still people who thought that they could work it out, the truth was that their 'differences of opinion' was also well-established, so most agents believed that they were just taking it slow, if at all. Hunter and Morse, of course, had their own opinion(s), but they weren't sharing it with the other agents, including the FitzSimmons.

"...This sucks, this really sucks," Jemma told Leo one night when they were getting to bed. (Yes, singular, thank you very much - it was about time.) "I mean - yeah. I always felt sorry for Daisy in regards to her parents and it was very bad, the way that things had turned out, with the Iliad and all, but the more I hear about them, including from Lincoln, the less I like them - both of them. I don't trust Kara Palamas much either but when she said that it sounded like Jiaying didn't believe in freedom of choice or in love, I'm inclined to believe her. Arranged marriages aren't necessarily bad, but the way that Li Shi was handling them was."

Leo nodded. He honestly wanted for Lincoln and Daisy to find happiness together too, but not just because they didn't have any other options and were thrust upon each other...in a non-sexual way. This...wasn't right, and not just because of any potential misunderstandings, it just wasn't.

"So, what do we do now?" Leo adressed Jemma, as his own girlfriend, cough, stopped coming her hair. "Do we put Lincoln and Daisy back together or not?"

"...I think that Hunter's right, Lincoln and Daisy don't want to be together in the first place," Jemma admitted. "Yeah, Lincoln's childhood was messed-up, but Daisy's wasn't very fun either, so one would think that they would want to help each other first and foremost, maybe with the help of others, even if the 'others' are Hunter and Morse, who aren't conventional themselves. Instead...neither of them - I'm not talking about Hunter and Morse here - want to be with each other, so - yeah? Maybe the director is right and we shouldn't get involved. I mean, yes, the reverse psychology could work here: if applied correctly, Lincoln and Daisy would get back in each other's arms, but they probably wouldn't be happy with each other, and they would be pissed at whoever it was that did the 'driving'-"

"But wouldn't it be taking one for the team?"

"Don't we already have a team? 'Quake' and 'Static' already are part of a team - our team, and they work well, with us and with the rest of 'secret warriors'. If they don't want to be sleeping together on top of everything else anymore, then they don't have to."

"Do we have to sleep together 'on top of everything else anymore'?" Jemma snapped. "Seriously, we should be setting an example to the two of them, instead we've seem to have relegated this job to Lance and Bobbi, which isn't really fair or smart, since Lance and Bobbi - well, mostly Lance - aren't very happy with us themselves, and may decide to bolt again, as they did after RF. They did it very heroically and self-sacrificingly, but still..." Jemma's fighting mood vanished as abruptly as it did come. "It sucks. Lance isn't wrong. Given an enemy, we can defeat them - more efficiently than we can deal with our internal issues-"

"Guys," Daisy's voice came through an internal comm.-link. "Get into the conference room in five. May got into trouble!"

"?!" the FitzSimmons exchanged equally confused looks and got into the conference room ASAP. If May was in trouble, then it was trouble with a capital T.

-18-

Inside the conference room, May's absence was noticeable - period. Coulson looked rather forlorn, despite Daisy's (and to a lesser extent - Lincoln's) attempts to cheer him up or rather - to support him, by promising that everything will be fine.

Lance and Bobbi were a bit to the side, apparently preparing for some sort of a presentation, when the door opened, and in came Ward, followed by Kara.

"Grant," Coulson grunted, "you and Palamas made your point last time; I don't know why you're here-"

"Radripal, the self-proclaimed city of arches," Grant said simply, "is run by a family of aliens. I'm not talking about gifted, or even human-alien hybrids as Daisy and Lincoln are, but more like Thor or like his people, but these aliens aren't Asgardians, but are called Skrulls."

"Ok," Coulson blinked. "You got our attention; keep it going."

"Let's see," Bobbi spoke up, as Grant and Kara made their way to her and Lance and began to set up something on a computer; before long, the wide screen depicted a large, semi-panoramic photo of immense natural stone arc or bridge, which connected two parts of a city, or even two cities. On one side, elegant manors housed tastefully attired residents, while on the other the upper stories of tenements leaned together over cramped streets, using every bit of space available to them to house their inhabitants.

"Whoa!" whistled Mack from his position. "And here I thought that _Manjipoor_ was bad!"

"This is Radripal, the city of arches, the capital of art, faith and trade of the Danamsa province of India," Grant replied. "It was founded about 4 centuries ago, when an especially promising vein of silver had been discovered. Sadly, the chief prospector wasn't a human, but a shapeshifting alien, named Detri Mehti. He was, however, also a high-class mining specialist, so he had no problems establishing Radripal in its initial stage, and ensuring that his family ruled it from therein."

A photo came of a short, beligerent man, whose rich and expensive get-up couldn't hide the fact that he was a scrapper when it came to a fight. "This is Akashar, he rules the city as its mayor, and he's one of the aliens," Bobbi explained. "As Grant had said before, these aliens are Skrulls-"

"Wait, what are Skrull?" Leo piped up. "Or Skrulls?"

"There are several intelligent races in the universe," Bobbi looked uncomfortable. "There are humans and Asgardians as examples. The Jotuns too, and those Chitauri that had attacked NYC, I guess... Among those races are the Kree and the Skrulls. The Kree...well, you met the Kree, or at least a Kree. In times past people had thought of them as blue angels, or even gods, as they do in India. The Skrulls are related to the Kree, as lions are related to tigers, or polar bears to grizzly bears, but the two races do not get along, and would rather interact with people...I mean, humans, than with each other. Also, while the Kree need technology to look like humans, the Skrulls can naturally shapeshift. They became known as the green demons, or the rakshasa, in India."

"Not just in India," Daisy said thoughtfully. "Lincoln knows- the people of Li Shi know - about the Kree and the Skrulls too. There are long genealogies of who came from whom-"

"Yes, but, the Kree and the Skrulls had a fundamental difference when it came to interactions with humans," Grant spoke simply. "The Kree used technology such as the Diviner and the Monolith to create their InHumans - essentially second-rate soldiers from their point of view. The Skrulls interacted with humans more 'naturally', and had children from them the ordinary way."

"Um, but weren't they called demons or whatever?" Jemma blinked. "Wouldn't it make them the bad guys?"

"You remember our interactions with the Kree?" Daisy grimaced. "I wouldn't call them such nice people myself."

"-And your interactions are typically Western; in the East, the matter of gods and demons is lesser clear-cut than just good and evil," Lincoln shrugged. "Grant once mentioned that he descended from the Skrulls-"

"Yes; my grandma Dot really loved her stories," Grant nodded, "one of her favorite was how her grandfather married an alien back in the old country. Of course, her other favorite was how she almost married Howard Stark but lost him to her duty to the old country, so I took it with a grain of salt, until I met Garrett and got involved with S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra and everything else."

"And you think that you've descended from the Skrulls?" Leo asked sceptically. "'Cause you can manipulate fire?"

"No, because of the ears," Grant exhaled, then inhaled, and shifted, from his fists upwards, becoming even bigger in size, darker in color, and more demonic in appearance. "I may be a throwback and not a real alien, but my ears are like those of a Skrull than another race," he said nonchalantly to the startled scientists. "Plus, I, just as agent Morse, had been in the city of arches once, over 9 years ago, so I had grounds for comparison: the head librarian, Mizria, is also an Skrull, but a very professional and nice one, even."

"...You're not surprised," Leo turned to Bobbi instead. "Lance and Kara, Daisy and Lincoln - they didn't expect this, though they don't show it now. Why aren't you surprised?"

"'Cause I knew already," Bobbi exhaled, "and, Leo and Jemma? Unlike Grant, I'm more of a first generation alien immigrant to Earth instead."

"Oh. So you are a Kree, an Asgardian, one of those Skrulls?" Leo pressed on. 

"No, a demonic Hell beast actually," Bobbi sighed, as she became bigger herself, and sprouted horns, (proportionally) bigger breasts, wings, a tail - everything that befits a succubus, and did we mention bigger breasts?

"Bobbi!" Lincoln and Daisy, Lance, Kara and Grant exclaimed, but the damage was done.

-19-

...When the FitzSimmons recovered, they were being already flown towards Radripal, the city of arches. "What was that?" Fitz spoke in a voice that was higher pitched than he liked it to be.

"Me," Bobbi said sourly, "I hail from the realm called Hellheim. It's like Asgard, only it's really not."

"Oh," Leo blinked. "And no one knew about it?"

"Well, no. Grant learned about it, Kara and Lance did, then Lincoln and Daisy. My S.O. knew. Agent Gonzales possibly too," Bobbi shrugged, "you're just latecomers, really."

"S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to prevent this sort of thing-"

"Yes, and agent Hand, who was in charge of Index, is an InHuman herself - a secret one," Grant chuckled humorlessly. "Anyhow, we're landing, so it's a good thing that you've recovered, because otherwise it would've been awkward."

"How so?" Fitz muttered: he already felt awkward enough.

"Well, Coulson had recovered quicker, so he has made a decision...no, not a decision - a plan. He is taking Hunter and Palamas and infiltrating the mayor's residence with them, while I'm going with Campbell and Johnson to the temple to start a distraction."

"What temple?" the FitzSimmons exclaimed. 

"An ancient Skrull temple," Bobbi shrugged, as she produced several photos. "Hopefully, the mayor hadn't destroyed it during these years - it was more than 9 years since Grant and I had seen it on agent Hand's orders...well, infiltrated it to be more precise."

"What about us?" Jemma piped up. "Me and Leo are field agents too, you know? May told me-"

"Right now, May is captured herself," Bobbi said bitterly, "and you've been fully deputized to be my back-up as I'm helping Coulson - and Grant, and others - at the command center."

"...Coulson isn't going to be taking a back seat on this one, is he?" Leo had an epiphany. "Not with May's life on the line. He may not love her, he said so himself, but-"

"Wait, what?" Morse blinked.

"It was sometime after we returned from the alien planet, and Grant, well, died, there was a lot of unease going around the base - just generic unease, similar to what we have been going through lately. I guess because of all the action that we've seen in our lives ever since the uprising and all, we don't do very well with prolonged periods of peace - it makes us antsy. Anyways, one night I caught Coulson keeping an eye on you and Hunter through the security cameras, and then we caught Daisy doing the same-"

"What now?" Bobbi gave the FitzSimmons a look. 

"Coulson was checking how everyone was doing on base, and I caught him doing that and went to talk to him - i.e. what's up with that, and we began to talk about life, just...general topics, and no, Jemma wasn't with us back then," Leo muttered. "My point is that at that time we had similar nightmares - that we were toys, puppets, really fragile ones in hands of some crazy god or something. It had less to do with aliens and more to do with PTSD, and then Daisy joined us, and we began to talk of more cheery topics, which was when Coulson said that he cared for May and appreciated what she was doing, but he didn't love her as he did with Roz or Audrey. We're thinking that May has learned of it soon enough and really didn't take it well, especially for her-" Leo paused and changed the topic: "And this isn't dismissing us, is it? We really are back-up-"

"Yes," Bobbi nodded firmly, "you are. Mack and Slingshot are also undergoing a distracting maneuver by talking to some of the opposition members of the city council. No, they don't know that there are 'pure' aliens among them, and we don't intend on blowing the whistle - not yet. We want to settle this peacefully - if we can."

Silence fell. "It could've been worse," Jemma muttered to Leo. "Hydra could've been involved for real."

Bobbi twitched, but since she was looking away from the FitzSimmons at the moment, the others didn't see it.

-20-

_Meanwhile..._

The temple loomed.

It was a solid, stony, impressive piece of native architecture; if you didn't know where to look, you wouldn't be able to find it, however, especially if you were just an ignorant tourist. "Wow!" Daisy told her companions. "This is certainly monumental. Lincoln, what do you think?"

"It's amazing," her current partner told her, before turning his attention to the other man. "Is it how you felt?"

"The first time around? Yes," Grant nodded. "When you're a rookie in S.H.I.E.L.D. and get to go on an overseas mission, it can get very exotic." He paused. "If you want, you can get souvenirs from this mission - some sort of a native knick-knack, or some photos. As long as you don't thrust them into Coulson's face too blatantly, he shall ignore them, especially since he will be busy with May-"

"Why'd you do it?" Lincoln asked suddenly. "This, this thing with agent Garrett-"

"Initially? Because Hand, and by extension Morse, were going to be on it - John and Victoria used to be friends with benefits, mostly political, but still. I don't know why Hand tried to get me to kill John in mid-flight - she knew that I knew that she was an InHuman and not a particularly friendly one to humans, she knew that I would never trust her completely - so I just gave her a scar to remember me and dropped her out of the plane in an escape pod." Grant's eyes grew opaque. "We weren't exactly a family, but we were a team - I had a choice of betraying Daisy, Coulson and the others, or betraying John. Either way I would go, I would become a traitor. I chose John; I made a bigger mistake than I theorized; and would do anything to fix it, but it seems that I can't. So I still do the right thing regardless, because this is part of what 'freedom of will' is."

"A pretty speech," Daisy said flatly: if Grant wanted a trip down the memory lane-

"Just as Daisy here is exercising hers to not believe me," Grant said flatly. "Campbell, free will is an ambiguous tool, you really must work to learn how to use it correctly. Without it, however, one would be one of Hydra drones, which is worse. Now, agent Johnson, since neither of us wants a trip down the memory lane, how are the photos coming?"

"Just fine," Daisy said flatly. "Are you two trying to bond?"

"Yes, maybe," Lincoln nodded. "Lance and Bobbi are correct, Daisy, and you know it-"

Before Daisy could reply, her comm.-link came alive. "Oh look," she said faux-brightly, "Coulson has called...oh. It's Bobbi _about_ Coulson-"

The trio abruptly stopped dawdling in the temple and moved out to help the director.

_TBC_


	6. Chapters 21-24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...and Coulson thought that it was just more of the good old Hydra.

-21-

The return back home was somewhat subdued. “So, how was it, fighting an alien?” Daisy asked Kara, largely out of politeness than anything else – the two of them were not friends and honestly, after all the fights (and not the physical kind, ones where a clear winner can be established), Daisy doubted that they would ever this sort of people – friends. Honestly, if the other woman had stopped coming around, Daisy would not mind much – really.

Of course, there also was Kara’s relationship with Ward, and Lincoln’s insistence about imprinting that took place between her and Ward because they were both InHumans – seriously? Daisy cared for Lincoln, she really did, but lately, yeah, their lives had rather drifted apart – and not in the good way.

“Ever seen huskies fight a grizzly bear?” Kara spoke up suddenly, startling the others. “Yeah, this was us. The fact that we had to take turns fighting the man and busting May out of her restraints didn’t make it any easier.”

“How’d it work?” Fitz asked, curious despite his misgivings (he had never been fond of Kara Palamas himself, mind). 

“We spent just as much time finding May’s whereabouts as fighting the man,” Kara shrugged. “None of us had been in the palace, not even Bobbi on the other end – your end, so tracker or no, finding May wasn’t easy. Fighting, however, was intense, right, Hunter?”

“Yeah,” Hunter nodded. “I don’t think I like the idea of fighting shapeshifting aliens in the future, and we’ve fought so many things, hadn’t we, Bob?”

“Mmm,” Bobbi nodded. “What happened?”

“He first turned into a lion so we had to use whips and hoops and go at it like circus lion tamers to keep him at bay. Then he began to blast us with fire – the Skrulls have energy-based powers too, what didn’t they have? – so we had to rig the local anti-fire measures to keep him down. Then he began to hypnotize us with some sort of an alien flute – but by then Coulson busted May out and they kicked his head again,” Lance elaborated. “Oh, and did we mention that we took turns at busting May out of restraints, so it was more like two of us fighting the alien, the third working at the restraints? Oh, and we all took turns-“

“Sounds messy,” Jemma said with some envy in her voice: yes, she did become even more of a field specialist lately, during the time of Hive, but she never had to fight a real alien, especially in such unusual circumstances. “Did you get the Intel or whatever that May got when she was captured, or was this a rescue mission alone?”

“We got the disk,” Coulson admitted, before giving Grant (and Bobbi) a look: “Who is Mizria?”

“One of lord Akashar’s potential heirs and an alien herself.”

“And she send you her regards because-?”

“She’s friends with Victoria Hand, who’s an alien herself?” Grant countered Coulson’s question with a question, causing the others to stare at him and Morse. “No, not a Skrull – she’s a demonic Hell beast as Morse over here, just more than twice as formidable.”

“Stop calling me that,” Bobbi snapped. “Just call me a succubus or something! I barely like it when Hunter calls me that and you’re not him!”

“…wasn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. supposed to keep the aliens, to say nothing of gifted and the like under control?” Daisy could not help but to ask.

“Yes. ‘Supposed’ is the key word here. In reality, quite a few agents that worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. were actually gifted or even aliens in disguise,” Bobbi admitted. “Why do you think Loki was able to fit into S.H.I.E.L.D. so easily? Pity that he was an ass, no offense to Thor and Maria Hill’s crush on the thunder-god…”

“…What am I missing?” Melinda asked quietly, (even for her), in an odd voice.

“Apparently Morse is an alien, and Hunter knew, Kara knew it, even Grant knew it,” Daisy shrugged. “And yes, she isn’t like me or Lincoln, but more like lady Sif or even Loki, you know? The aliens and the others had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. before Hydra ever did.”

“I think that Hydra had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. no more than 4 years ago – well, maybe 5 or 6,” Grant shrugged. “Cavalry? You don’t look so well.”

“How long?” Melinda’s voice was dry, expressionless and whispery as a piece of old paper. “How long did you know about aliens?”

There was a pause. “Melinda?” Phil finally broke it. “Who are you talking with?”

“You, Phil, you,” Melinda shifted her head slightly to face the director. “The aliens among us? Bobbi, Ward, anyone else?”

“Well, I just learned about Morse and the others like her working for S.H.I.E.L.D. when we were going to get you,” Coulson replied, trying to go for nonchalance, and not quite succeeding. “We learned about the Skrulls here from Grant only we went to rescue you – of course he, and Kara, and Bobbi, and maybe Hunter knew about this – all of this – beforehand, but-“

Smoothly, Melinda got onto her feet and walked into a nearly corner, (it was not easy, the current room on the Bus mark III was round, but she managed), where she curled into a knot and appeared to have a break down, complete with quiet sobbing. 

“Um, now what?” Leo just could not keep quiet, it seemed. “Shouldn’t someone-“

“Eh, screw it. Already died once, I know what it entails,” Grant muttered, went to Melinda, scooped her up, (given their respective sizes, weight and all it was easy), and put her onto Coulson’s lap, (the man was shocked and confused into immobility). “Is this better, Cavalry?”

“A little,” the latter muttered, before the realization hit and she jumped up as if she was on fire, her face red as fire, etc. “Ward!”

Before Ward could say something, Daisy was shoved into Melinda, instinctively hugging her. “Shh, shh, don’t cry,” Kara spoke from behind her (apparently, now she was decent at imitating voices, too, since right now she sounded very much like Daisy). “Don’t cry, Melinda, we still love you.”

“Coulson doesn’t,” Melinda spoke in a tiny voice, clearly not angry with Daisy’s hug; in fact, at the moment the senior specialist looked so unlike herself that Daisy didn’t even try to resist or break apart the impromptu hug – just in case. “Nobody does. Andrew once did – I lost him to my job, to my work, to my calling, or so I assumed. I was wrong, wasn’t I? I have reached my limit a while back, and it can-not be broken, or surpassed, and I got nothing to show for it: no family, nothing.”

“Daisy can adopt you,” Kara suggested, her usual smirk, hinting at mischief, absent from her face. “Yes, I know that her situation is difficult, but from a legal P.O.V., she’s an orphan, so maybe if you can do the paperwork you’ll be a family all the same? A mother and daughter, two sisters, whatever?”

“I like that,” Melinda said quietly. “It’s crazy, I know, but even this sort of thing is better than nothing-“

Phil twitched, and would have done, or at least said, something, when the jet landed – the agents had arrived home.

-22-

“So,” Jemma said some time later, when the field teams had cleaned up and hit the showers and the like. “Melinda? Um, agent May? What did you recover? From the city of arches?”

“Is this how we call it now?” Melinda muttered half to herself and half to the rest of the women of the shower. “I guess it is sort of appropriate.” She paused. “The mission… the mission was supposed to be a clean-up… well, something of a clean-up in regards to Malick and Hive. The man – I am talking about Gideon Malick and his Gothic industries – had many contacts, especially in the Old World, so I was sent to investigate and to learn what was going on in it.” She gave Kara a look. “Did you know-“

“Only by hearsay,” Kara shook her head. “Grant and I did go to South America – this was before we even kidnapped Bobbi or settled down in Mexico, so I knew that he’d been around the world quite a bit, but so had Morse, so have I, for that matter, once my memories have begun to come back. Moreover, since Hydra was not all this different from S.H.I.E.L.D., I cannot say that I’m surprised to learn that it had branches outside of the U.S. too – wherever they are.”

There is a pause, as the others think about how to tackle a somewhat necessary topic. Bobbi clearly mouths ‘not it’ and is intent on not doing it, and given her and Kara’s past, it is probably for the best, so Jemma, (since Daisy is not the best choice either), decides to go for it.

“You know,” she speaks, “you were one of us once, for real-“

“Agreed,” Kara nodded, all traces of good humor gone now, “and now I am a package deal with Grant. The man has brought me back from the dead, literally, so I am not ditching him. Johnson!” she whirled to Daisy, startling her. “Can you honestly tell us that our Skype talks – well, it’s mostly me and Campbell, but still – haven’t been initiated by Hill and the director? She had been ‘subtly’ ‘in contact’ with me too, suggesting that life for CyberTek would be better if Ward would be ousted and a more S.H.I.E.L.D.-friendly director would be in. This is so wrong that I’m – this was why me and Grant acted like that when we met her and Stark here; that and give Coulson a break: the man looks like death warmed over, in a not-funny way.”

“Kara,” Melinda said quietly. “I speak here for all of us – we aren’t behind this; S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t behind this; if Hill has been doing this sort of ‘subtlety’ as you call it, she’s been doing this of her own free will and it’s her idea alone. She and Fury were friends with Phil once, but lately they appear to have drifted apart…well, not lately, it just went ever since Phil became the new director…”

“So what is going on with you two?” Jemma decided to abruptly change the topic; unfortunately, the new theme is not a very good one either, since she had addressed Melinda in regards to Coulson. 

“Nothing,” the older woman snapped. “Not anymore, not ever. You and Fitz on the other hand?”

“Meh,” Jemma muttered, even as she noticed Kara and Bobbi exchange a look that was both awkward and weird. “What?”

“We think that you might be pregnant,” Bobbi replied. 

“What? That’s ridiculous!” Jemma yelped. “My period- my period,” she continued quietly, as she did some calculations. “Excuse me.” And she rushed off.

“Is she pregnant?” Daisy asked Bobbi, who nodded.

“Succubus, remember? I know this sort of thing,” Bobbi shook her head. “Plus, I don’t think that anyone here is surprised, are they?”

The others exchanged looks, remembering how the FitzSimmons went at it, and agreed.

-23-

“And so,” Coulson spoke, trying to put a good game face onto himself and not quite succeeding (though not quite failing, either); “we’re all here. If anyone wants to say anything beforehand-“

“Leo, I’m pregnant!” Jemma’s screech is almost pitched highly enough to shatter a chalkboard. “You’re the father!!”

“Of course I am,” Leo nodded, the very picture of calm in contrast to Jemma’s state. “Why, is anyone surprised?”

No one was not really. “Bobbi got you a wedding dress,” Leo nodded in the same manner. “Lance got me a tux. We need wedding rings-“

“Mack, about that,” Grant spoke softly to the other S.H.I.E.L.D. engineer. 

“Ah, right, here,” Mack produced a box with two silver wedding rings right out of ‘the city of arches’. “I got to admit – you would pay much crazier money for them here than you would abroad-“

“Great,” Leo nodded as he gently took the rings. “Jemma, will you marry me?” he gave one of the rings to Jemma. 

“Yes,” Jemma nodded. “Leo-?”

“Yes,” Leo said curtly; they exchanged the rings, put them on, and sat down in their customary places. 

“…” Coulson shot them a sharp look. “Maybe the two of you should sit this one out?”

Leo and Jemma shot him a sharp, furious look themselves – rather like a pair of angry monkeys, or perhaps – puppies. “No,” Leo said firmly. “Please, director – we don’t want to be with just each other for company, not now.”

“Very well,” Coulson relented, as he finally clicked on a screen. It projected a flat map of the world, with six cities pinpointed all over it. “Now. This,” he points to one of them, “is Radripal, where we’ve been. Now, if any of you know any of the other 5-“

“I know the one in Africa, I just cannot spell it to you in English,” Bobbi says faux-enthusiastically. “The closest I can come up to it is Anuli, and that just isn’t right. Agent Hand and the other high-level S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, like Sitwell, was handling it personally-“

“Sitwell wasn’t S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Coulson bit out. “He was-“

“Sir, stop,” Lincoln suddenly spoke, ignoring Coulson’s glare. “The truth is the old place and your S.H.I.E.L.D. are two different organizations, and what can never be in your agency did occur in the old one, so can you please let agent Morse continue."

“Thank you,” Bobbi hurriedly said, “and director, this is important. This is the place where aliens such as I arrive on Midgard – well, on Earth if you want to get technical.”

“As opposed to what? Jupiter?” Leo snapped, before blushing. “Sorry.”

“Yes,” Bobbi looked completely serious. “You do not want to go to Jupiter; the natives of Jupiter aren’t human or humanoid; they really don’t like outsiders and immigrants, and tend to enslave them in the old-fashioned sense of the word.”

“Oh. Now we’re both sorry for the joke,” Jemma muttered, before looking sideways at Grant. “Did you-?”

“No,” Grant shook his head. “Me and Morse did 4 missions in Africa together. One of them was a major, all-S.H.I.E.L.D. effort in regards to Wakanda. The other 3 were relatively low-level ones and no, they were outdoors missions – I don’t do this well in cities, actually.”

“What a surprise,” Jemma muttered; Grant heard her:

“Really? Well, agent Simmons, where do you function better, as a field agent?” he asked her.

Jemma blushed red; so did Leo:

“Grant please don’t!” he gave him a look. “I don’t know if you’re good or evil anymore, but petty is one thing that you never were. Please don’t start now.”

“Ok,” Grant nodded. “So, uh, Morse? You want something to say before Jemma sidelined us?”

“Sir, let me be honest here. If the U.S. city over here is Malick’s base-“

“It was H.Q. for Gothic industries, yes-“

“And since Anuli is connected to aliens – not to Hydra, and neither is Radripal,” Morse twitched one of her ears, which were not looking fully human at the moment. “Then maybe this isn’t a Hydra plot, but an alien one instead? Of course, I may be prejudiced-“

“You’re not. This is Dhucharg,” Lincoln interrupted someone else once more. “Daisy, your mother was from this city. It is…like Li Shi, only not. Li Shi was a haven. Dhucharg is part of China’s People Republic; it is part of their system.”

“…The Russians had tried to build, **cough,** sanctuary for the InHumans,” Daisy muttered. “The Chinese have already done that?”

“No, they rather don’t differentiate between their human and InHuman citizens,” Lincoln confessed. “As long as you’re a communist, it’s fine. If not – then not. Your DNA doesn’t matter.”

“…Jiaying was an ex-communist?” Daisy stared at the other InHuman. “Li Shi was founded by Chinese dissidents?”

“Yup,” Lincoln shrugged. “My parents were InHumans themselves – they just never went through the change: they were too old when they came to Li Shi. They had no problems in agreeing that the Chinese government was The Man and it should be defied. They were something of hippies, I think.”

There was a pause as everyone thought this over. “I did not know this,” Bobbi confessed. “I knew that there was a gifted movement in China – it’s called Order of the Eclipse. Agent Hand told me that it aimed to subvert and cast down the Chinese government – not that it was the Chinese government.”

“Maybe it is both?” Hunter suggested. “Who’s to say that one part of a government doesn’t want to get rid of another part? This sort of thing has happened in the past, though judging by Afghanistan, and the roles that KGB and CIA had played in it, it’s not healthy for us to get involved in it – or for anyone else, either, even the Chinese.”

“Oh, come on!” Leo exploded. “Is it just me, or can we maybe, possibly, stumble upon some sort of an alien plot to take over Earth?”

“It’s possible… no. Leo, I’m afraid that you’re correct,” Daisy exhaled. “I did the deciphering of the information on the CD, and, the city number 1 – in Greece – is the weapon production, mass and cheaply. City number 6 – in Mongolia – is the treasury. In addition, city number 5 – Malick’s base – it is the key, or perhaps the key hole, into the U.S. It’s one of the less important cities out of the six, and mainly because of its’ location, yeah?”

There was a pause, and Jemma began to sob. Quietly. “It isn’t fair,” she muttered quietly, “it isn’t fair. I wanted our baby to be born into a happy world, not a world where the Chinese are conspiring with aliens to take over the world.”

“Maybe they don’t?” Kara suggested helpfully. “Maybe they just want to tear America down and on its ashes build a new, less democratic state?”

“Not helping, 33,” Jemma glared at the taller woman.

“You’re angry now, or annoyed, rather than sad,” Kara shrugged. “I beg to differ. We know that things can be worse, don’t we? You may end up giving up the child or just losing it-“

“Fine, I get it,” Jemma muttered. “Sir,” she turned to Coulson, “what do you think?”

“Well,” Coulson looked away, “I confess that I assumed that this was just more of Hydra. Grant, what did you do with Gothic Industries-?”

“Hunter?”

“I got the information,” Bobbi replied as she passed a memory stick to Coulson and Daisy. “Basically, Kara told me that they partitioned and disbanded the place: according to Grant, as far as business went, Malick made Ian Quinn look like Stark in the old-fashioned way, and that wasn’t a compliment.”

“Malick was a parasite,” Grant told the older man evenly, “his business was dirty, a lot of it was organized crime from the times of Al Capone, you know? I, and Guyiterra, and others, have fixed the damage Malick has caused to the world.”

“And who are you to decide that?” Coulson gave the man a look.

“It was a collective decision, one that involved a lot of Malick’s former aides who were sick of him, alongside some other people, like Werner, who got tired of Malick selling and buying them like so much meat,” Grant spat. “By killing me on the alien planet you gave Malick several more months to live. After he tried to talk to me about John, it was only a matter of time until either Werner or I killed the bloody fossil. Sir, you are right – I am a flawed, maybe a deeply flawed man, but what did you intend to do with Gothic? Incorporate it into S.H.I.E.L.D.? From what I remember from the Academy’s history courses, S.H.I.E.L.D. never had much luck in the business world; you may be able to handle CyberTek, but Gothic? No.” 

“I told you – if Hill was messing with Kara and you,” Daisy began but Grant glared, startling her into silence. 

“No, this isn’t about that, thank God. The trick is that CyberTek was initially designed to be a part of S.H.I.E.L.D., not Hydra or anything else. However, with John gone, it is my property, not anyone else’s – initially. Nowadays, Kara, Werner, and a few others own it in part with me,” Grant shrugged. “I own a major part of the shares, but combined they can oust me, legally and fair. Only – they aren’t, so I must be doing something right.”

“Oh,” Coulson looked thoughtful. “Are you trying to buy your way into S.H.I.E.L.D.-?”

“Sir, do I look like Ian Quinn to you?” Grant actually exhaled a cloud of smoke through his mouth, and he was not smoking anything. “That ship has sailed, fair enough. What do you plan on doing with these six cities?”

“Talk to Stark, maybe to Hill too,” Coulson admitted, reluctantly. “Hopefully, if nothing goes wrong-?”

“About that, D.C.,” Daisy said apologetically, as she presented a newspaper article from the Internet. “I think something has already went sideways.”

There was a pause as everyone read online about the engagement of Tony Stark to Maria Hill.

“You’re right,” Coulson confessed. “Something must have. Well, let’s find out!”

-24-

The towers of Stark Industries™ loomed high above Coulson and his abbreviated entourage. “Don’t tell Ward or Palamas,” he told Bobbi Morse as the two of them, alongside Lance, walked through the corridors and rode the elevators. “But they might’ve been up to something. There is a reason why S.H.I.E.L.D. never got involved in business ventures – not outright, not like this.”

“Feeling overwhelmed, are we?” Bobbi muttered back. Before Coulson could reply, the doors opened, and the three of them were greeted by Stark and Hill themselves. 

“Well,” Stark was not particularly friendly, “is it a courtesy call or what?”

“Business,” Coulson said without any smiles on his own face. “Firstly, Tony, you were correct – S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t a very good organization, especially in the old times, though to be frank, I’m afraid that it was less corrupt than you think and more incompetent.”

Stark stared. So did Hill.

“Second,” Coulson continued, “it had failed – not just with Hydra, but with the aliens too. The aliens, apparently, had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. for a lot longer than Hydra had, and have used it to integrate into Earth’s affairs.”

“How bad is it?” Tony immediately turned professional.

“The Chinese are involved. On a federal level.”

Tony swore as he walked around the office saying many unmentionable things about the Chinese.

“Stark,” Coulson said firmly. “I confess. I made a mess of things – of many things, but this time I need your help from the other end – your end. Maria’s help too. Can we negotiate? This is important. Maybe the aliens are not planning to invade Earth. Maybe they just plan to take over the U.S. But-“

“Fine,” Tony nodded. “Coulson, you win. Maria?” he stopped walking and moved over to her. “Please? Remember what we’ve been talking around since Coulson came out of the closet?”

“Fine,” the ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent muttered and shape-shifted – not into a ‘Hell beast’ as Bobbi, but into a Skrull. “Happy?”

Coulson took a firm grip on his well-being. “How long?” he asked his supposed friend.

“For the last 9 years,” Maria/not-Maria said simply. “Fury, well, not-Fury, and I had been running S.H.I.E.L.D. among others.”

Coulson did some mental math. “This was when WSC began that joint action, with us, in Asia – India and beyond. Radripal?”

“In part,” Maria/not-Maria admitted.

“Why? Why the invasion? Why the secrecy?” Coulson exhaled, “and yes, this is me saying it, I get the irony.”

“It’s politics,” Maria/not-Maria spat. “As Midgard, as one of the nine realms, you were a part of Asgardians’ protectorate! However, the Asgardians are having their own problems lately; our Empire decided it was time to make a move and to take Earth – well, Midgard or the Solar system if you like, from the Asgardians, before someone else does! Like the Kree or someone even worse…”

“I see. In addition, what did you do to the original Hill, Fury, and others? Relocate them to a distant planet?”

“Well, duh!” Maria said bitterly. “We’re the Skrulls! We are better than the Kree are! There was a time – before I came to Earth – when I actually believed it.” She drooped, her elf-like ears drooped, and Tony scratched behind one of them.

“Tony, not in public!” Maria yelled in a manner not unlike how Jemma yelled at Leo as she perked back up, in a manner of speaking. “This is, that is-“

“Stop,” Tony said brightly, before switching his attention back to Coulson. “What? It is I. I am still me. Just because a woman is green and elf-like doesn’t mean I won’t do her.” He paused, as Maria/not-Maria gave him a look worthy of a gorgon. “In a good way, Maria, in a good way!”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Maria shook her head. “So, director, look. Doing this was a mistake. We should have done something else the other way around-“

“You now, not a long while ago, I heard one of my agents ask another why didn’t she let him die? I can ask you the same thing – why did not you let me die? You were planning to take over the world-“

“Because you’re a human, Phil Coulson, not a bloody Kree!” Maria/not-Maria said bitterly. “We’re Skrulls! We are good people! However, if we do not take over this realm someone else will – unless you will prove strong enough to hold it on your own-“

“Which is why Fury – or your partner, your superior, etc. – was stockpiling and making these weapons,” Coulson understood. “And when we helped the Avengers to fight-off Loki and his forces you knew that it could happen. Only then Hydra happened and everything fell apart.”

“Yes. Hydra – it wasn’t us,” Maria/not-Maria admitted. “This is something else that we hadn’t foreseen. Captain America’s actions too. Now everything is different and we’re losing control.”

“CyberTek?”

“Was a mistake. Did you have better luck?”

“Maybe,” Coulson said quietly. “Stark. Maybe I am making a mistake about you and your partner, but maybe it is time that we worked out something new, don’t you say?”

And the latter agreed.

_TBC_

**Author's Note:**

> This story will be updated relatively sporadically, I'm afraid.


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